


Captain Becker's Book Club

by TheLibranIniquity



Series: Captain Becker's Nouns [2]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Gen, Male Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-31
Updated: 2010-05-31
Packaged: 2017-11-06 00:29:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,386
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/412725
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLibranIniquity/pseuds/TheLibranIniquity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Becker narrowly avoids a fight with a pensioner, plots murder and hates Mondays. Not necessarily in that order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Captain Becker's Book Club

Hilary Becker was having a bad day. He could safely say that was completely and one-hundred per cent true. It was the truest thing he had ever said, possibly since calling Giles a tosser the day he turned twenty-one and -

Anyway. Bad day. Becker was having one, make no mistake about it.

God, he hated Mondays.

It had started innocently enough, sitting at his parents' breakfast table in Hucknall, listening to his dad cook breakfast while his mum continued to update him on the comings and goings of people he wasn't even sure he knew, much less cared about. While ignoring his parents in this fashion, Becker had been filling out a tiny spiral-bound notebook, the kind you bought for fifty pence from WHSmith because you were in a hurry and ruing the fact you'd left your proper notebook on the side in the kitchen before dashing for the train station. The notebook contained various brain farts and recommendations for improving general security at the ARC – the one that investigated spatial-temporal anomalies, not the wooden thing out of the Bible. Security was in his job description, after all – in fact, he was pretty sure it was his entire job description and yes, it was impossible most days to fulfil the job requirements at all satisfactorily, not least because the people he was tasked with the security of were, at best, idiots and, at worst, kamikazes with university degrees.

But the dinosaurs more than made up for it.

So there he'd been, using the last of his weekend off frantically scribbling something that could pass for work, when his mobile phone rang.

Instantly Mum had turned on him, treating the offending technology the same way she would a steaming pile of dung that had magically appeared on the breakfast table, and continuing to throw Becker dirty looks until he grabbed the phone and dashed out into the back garden.

“Becker.”

 _“Ah, Captain.”_ It was Lester, and herein the bad day began. _“Is there a reason you failed to appear at the departmental briefing this morning?”_

Becker frowned. “Yes, sir.”

_“Care to elaborate?”_

“I'm... not in London, sir. It's my weekend off.”

_“I see. Where exactly are you?”_

“Nottingham, sir.”

Lester sighed loudly. _“I don't suppose there's any chance of you actually making an appearance today, is there, Captain? Only there's that piddly little matter of ARC and, by extension, national security that you were required to offer fresh ideas on this morning.”_

Becker pinched the bridge of his nose and wished he'd left his phone upstairs. On silent. “I'll get the next train out, sir.” And shoot whoever had failed to notify Major Ryan and whoever else that he was on his sodding weekend off. Halfway up the sodding country.

 _“See that you do.”_ Lester hung up. He never had been one for typical pleasantries.

Becker swore mentally and counted to twenty. When he'd finished, he went back inside the house. “Don't suppose you can make those bacon sarnies to go, Dad? That was work. Apparently they're all doomed to a pitiless purgatory until I get back down there.”

Captain Becker Senior chuckled. “And so they should be. Do you want a lift to the station?”

“Yes, please.”

o o o o o

The 9:02 train from Nottingham to London St. Pancras was a seething mass of suited, briefcase-wielding, probably hungover and generally beleaguered humanity. Becker had wound up sacrificing the last available seat in Coach E to a scary looking elderly woman with two walking sticks and was now perched uncomfortably on top of a constantly moving pile of suitcases and packages in the baggage rack.

All told it was probably dangerous, but no more so than the convoys he'd ridden in during the tour in Afghanistan, so on reflection it wasn't too bad a spot at all. At least here he could read, even if it had taken a feat of near-superhuman flexibility to get the book out of his rucksack without toppling the entire contents of the baggage rack – including himself.

The battered paperback copy of _Dune_ that Becker had swiped from his dad's bookshelf was even older than he was, not that it had stopped him reading it several times over when he was younger – or again, now, having realised that, as well as his proper notebook, he'd also left _Chindi_ at home. (He couldn't remember exactly how he'd survived the train journey up to Nottingham on Friday – now that he thought about it, it was possible he'd simply been too tired at the time to care about having something to read.)

It didn't take him long to get lost in the story again and, as such, he was pleasantly surprised to find out that the train would shortly _”be arriving at its final destination.”_ Apparently the luggage he was sitting on all belonged to London-bound people, as he hadn't been disturbed once during the journey, save for the ticket inspector.

Becker made it halfway to the Underground link that would get him home before remembering Lester's tone from earlier. He groaned and began cutting through the tides of people all trying to get to the next platform, and had to remind himself several times that it was not socially acceptable to shoot his way through a sea of commuters – the fact that he wasn't armed was in no way a detriment to this plan. He was sure he'd have found a way to make it work.

Where his fellow passengers on the Nottingham to London train had simply been hungover, Becker was fairly sure that at least some of the current denizens of the Underground link heading towards the ARC were actually still drunk. He'd managed to score a seat this time, but it was next to a grizzled looking man about his dad's age who stank of something strongly brewed and at one point fell asleep against Becker's shoulder, snoring and burping loudly.

Had he mentioned he hated Mondays?

o o o o o

At the security checkpoint at the front entrance to the Anomaly Research Centre, Captain Becker studiously ignored the smirks and knowing looks of the two corporals on duty while he fished around in his rucksack for his security pass. He knew without even thinking about it that rumours and wild theories about the smell of alcohol still clinging to him – not to mention the fact he was still in civilian clothing – would be around the rest of the soldiers on duty quicker than most venereal diseases, but he couldn't find it in him to care.

Half of him wished he was back in Hucknall, sneaking off to the shed at the bottom of the garden with Dad to talk about things of actual import and consequence without Mum overhearing or interfering. Another, smaller part of him, mourned the lack of a shower. Weirdly enough, the rest of him was on Arrakis – the version he envisioned from the book as opposed to the travesty that had been the film, which was possibly a good thing. Relatively speaking.

Anyway: he'd made it to the ARC, as per James bloody Lester's orders – and he even had the security recommendations that everyone couldn't possibly have survived one more day without. 

And so he made Lester's office his first – and only – destination. After this he was going home and having that shower. Possibly also turning his phone off, depending on how petty he felt by then.

Any hope he had had of making an inconspicuous entrance, and then slinking off again, were dashed the minute he had clear sight of Lester's office. Everyone seemed to be in there – Major Ryan, Professor Cutter, Drs Hart and Page, Miss Lewis, Miss Maitland, Temple, and of course, Lester himself. Yep, everyone. Becker thought there may have been a joke in there somewhere, but damned if he was going to be the one to find it.

He entered the office without knocking (one advantage of glass walls – they always see you coming) and, without taking his rucksack off, he reached back and pulled out the notebook and tossed it onto Lester's desk.

“I hope you consider this worth me smelling like drunken commuters, _sir_ ,” he said, not caring if he sounded more like a petulant child than an officer of Her Majesty's Armed Forces.

And then he left. Strolled, not flounced – because if there was one thing his dad had taught him since he'd reached the legal drinking age, it was that Beckers don't flounce. Ever. No matter what Giles says – or does.

He'd strolled as far as the middle of the atrium when it suddenly occurred to Becker that the book he'd oh so cavalierly tossed onto Lester's desk hadn't felt like a cheap little spiral-bound notebook. It had felt an awful lot like a thirty-four year old copy of...

Shit. Instantly multiple possible courses of action flashed through Becker's mind, up to and including breaking down in tears and snivelling that he was still supposed to be in the Midlands and why did everyone have it in for him when he was supposed to be on leave, anyway?

Needless to say, he did not do this. What he did do was make an abrupt about-face and was about to slink back up to Lester's office to switch the book for the notebook before people had enough time to come up with jokes and seemingly witty rejoinders about soldier boys reading fantasy novels when – he stopped.

Temple was standing right in front of him – and when exactly had he learned to sneak up on people like that? Hart was the only team member around here capable of enough stealth to out-manoeuvre Becker, and he didn't like the idea that that had changed without him being told.

Temple was also holding the copy of _Dune_ – _his_ copy of _Dune_ – in his hand, and he had an expression on his face that usually translated to: Run away. Run away _fast_.

Becker did not do this, not least because that was his dad's book Temple was holding, and even his dad would not refrain from grievous bodily harm if Becker misplaced something of his without even having told him he was borrowing it in the first place. He was also acutely aware that everyone else had congregated on the balcony overhanging the atrium and were watching him and Temple with disturbing attentiveness.

“You, um, left this upstairs,” Temple began, holding up the book. He did not hold it out, however, and Becker was sure he wouldn't like the consequences if he were to reach out and simply snatch the book back.

“Yes.” Becker wasn't sure what he was supposed to say to that, exactly. Yes, he had been dumb enough to throw the wrong book down on Lester's desk. He was also tired, craving his dad's bacon sandwiches and he still smelled like Drunk And Sleepy on the Underground.

“I've never read anything by Frank Herbert before. Is he any good?”

“Um...” Whatever he had been expecting to come out of Temple's mouth next... that hadn't been it. “Yes? Just that one, though. The sequels are a bit rubbish.” The film adaptation too – but it was a generally accepted truth of the universe that film adaptations were, far more often than not, crap.

Temple grinned. “Oh. Cool.” He still made no indication of offering Becker his book back, and he was increasingly aware of the unwanted but still rapt audience above them. Temple seemed oblivious. “I didn't have you down as the type to read sci-fi.”

And what exactly was he supposed to say to _that_? His reaction must have actually shown on his face this time, because Temple instantly looked panicked and began back pedalling.

“I didn't mean that the way it sounded. Honest! I just meant – it's really cool you're into sci-fi and stuff – you're not – well, I guess I don't really know that much about you to be making judgements like that for which I apologise so, so much, because nobody likes people assuming things about them, right?” Temple finally paused for breath – oddly enough he seemed to deflate at the same time. “I'm sorry. Didn't mean to get carried away like that.”

“It's fine,” Becker replied automatically. He briefly wondered what would happen if he locked his mother and Temple into a room together before deciding it wouldn't be worth the risk to the universe as a whole. “You can borrow it, if you want.”

“Really?”

“Yes.” Becker shrugged. “I was only rereading it on the train earlier. It's not mine though, so don't lose it – or I may have to kill you.” Instantly, Temple's face paled and his eyes widened. “Kidding,” Becker added hastily. “Just kidding.”

Temple didn't look convinced, but he nodded anyway. “I'll be really careful with it,” he promised, “and I'll keep it safely away from Rex.”

It took Becker a minute to realise Temple meant the small green prehistoric lizard he and Miss Maitland seemed to have shared custody of. “Why don't you tell me what you think of it, once you've read it,” he offered, surprising himself.

“All right,” Temple nodded, a smile finally reappearing. Becker couldn't help himself – he smiled back.

“If you two are quite finished making doe eyes at each other down there, I'd quite like those security recommendations, Captain.” Lester's voice cut through what little there was of Becker's good mood.

“Yes, sir,” he called back up, and started towards the walkway back up to the balcony.

“See you later, Becker,” Temple called out.

“Connor,” Becker nodded back, and he was halfway up the walkway before realising that was the first time he'd used Te – Connor's first name out loud. He made a point of ignoring the smirks and grins on the ladies' faces as they passed him down on their way down to the atrium, and equally showed a complete lack of reaction to Hart's laughing, _”I think soldier boy's made a friend,”_ to Cutter.

What he did do was pull out the cheap little spiral-bound notebook and hand it over to Major Ryan before leaving the ARC as quickly – and sedately – as he could.

Monday had been pretty terrible so far, but there was a shower and the possibility of a nap in his immediate future.

Things were definitely looking up.


End file.
